A mother’s pro-life testimony blows people away

    Marjorie Long of Lake Charles, La., stood on the grass lot near the corner of South Claiborne and Napoleon avenues in New Orleans on Nov. 1, reflecting on what had brought her 205 miles – and a lifetime – to this point.
    Long, 55, held a candle, and the light in her soul was pouring out. She also wore small button on her blouse that read: “Women Do Regret Abortion.”
    Long has been a pro-life advocate in the Diocese of Lake Charles for the last 15 years, and she coordinates Rachel’s Vineyard retreats that help women and men touched by abortion heal from the pain and anguish that they try in so many ways simply to wish away.
    “Abortion hurts both men and women,” Long said. “Every abortion touches the lives of 60 people. There’s the abortionist, the family members, husbands, wives, boyfriends. It’s time for people to hear the truth. And the only way you’re going to hear the truth is from those who are walking with those who are suffering.”
    In 2010, after years of knocking on prison doors, Long finally got the go-ahead from the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office to conduct a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat twice a year in a local women’s prison. Long didn’t know what to expect, but she was blown away by the results.
    “Most of these women are post-abortive,” Long said. “When we finally got into the prison, the chaplains looked at me and said, ‘My goodness, where have you been all these years?’”
    Now, whenever a prisoner comes into the system, the intake form includes a box to check if the woman wants to disclose that she has had an abortion. Long visits every prisoner who checks the box.
    As she stood on the grass lot near the proposed Planned Parenthood regional abortion facility, Long said she could understand why abortion has been such an intractable issue in American culture. She was there.
    “I am very aware of having the other perspective on the other side of post-abortion debate,” Long said. “But I can tell you about how people in your family are directly affected and hurt from abortion.”
    Long attended the prayer service with her husband Ken, whom she credits with being the necessary support she needed in order to heal spiritually and emotionally. But perhaps the most amazing part of her story are her two children.
    Her daughter Nicole is the mother of five children between ages of 1 and 12. That’s impressive enough.
    Then Long talks about her son Nathan. His own life and spirituality have been so influenced by his mother’s decision to help others heal from the pain of abortion that he works with his mother on Rachel’s Vineyard retreats.
    Nathan is also known as Father Nathan Long, a Catholic priest.
    “It’s just so beautiful,” Long said, fighting back tears. “God is good. If you give your ‘yes’ to God, God just goes all out.”
    When Nathan was little – “even when he didn’t know the whole perspective” – he could sense that something was wrong. Then, when he found out “the whole picture, his only words were how proud he was of me.”
    “He wanted people to see the misery and the healing and who Jesus is,” Long said. “He wanted people to know that.”
    Invariably, the Rachel’s Vineyard retreats provide that safe space where men and women can talk about the unthinkable and find forgiveness and God’s mercy. The first man who attended a retreat in 2010 – he had unresolved grief after having paid for three abortions as a young man – was so moved by his experience that he became a member of the retreat team.
    “God sent us the right man,” Long said. “A gentle man.”
    At the retreats, Long will give her personal testimony, and Father Long will talk about St. Paul’s promise that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God. On the final day of the three-day retreat, they reveal that they are mother and son.
    “We cry with these men and women,” Long said. “We also laugh. But when Nathan says, ‘Mom’ at the end, it blows their minds. I think it gives them some hope. They can see how we’re all affected.”
    And then, Long looked over at the grass lot, protected on the perimeter by a plastic orange fence.
    “We don’t need this big monster,” she said.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.